4

II. The, not Another

Like Pierre Menard14 retracing the steps of Miguel de Cervantes to reproduce the Don Quixote, Fascist

reworkings of Rome sought not to ‘compose another15’ Rome, but rather to ‘compose the

16’ Rome. Few

times in history has the choice of a determiner been so important. This subtle play on language

and subsequent radical alteration of meaning permeated the Fascist rhetoric in which the second

instalment of the Roman fiction is couched. The second grouping of objects in Invisible Cities

elucidated the dexterous manipulation of language during this time, and included both a transcript

and recording of Mussolini’s seminal 1922 ‘Past and Future’ speech, in which were spoken the words:

‘Rome is our point of departure and reference; it is our symbol or, if you wish, our

myth17.’

The identity of the speaker is unknown, though it is understood the exhibition claimed this to

have been Mussolini himself, in spite of no record elsewhere of such a recording of the original

speech ever existing. It is likely that in proffering such a lie the curators satirised the

frequency with which fiction boldly posited in the appropriate demeanour is unquestioningly

accepted as fact. Regardless of the speaker, the inclusion of the speech in two different mediums

underscores the impact of mode of presentation upon the overall effect and meaning of identical

content.

In reading the ‘Past and Future’ speech, one becomes aware not only of the primacy of recapturing

this ‘immortal spirit of Rome18’ as a Fascist objective, but also the regime’s recognition of the

artifice embedded in the narrative they sought to amend. In redacting a story that was in part

already ‘myth’, Fascists commenced their reworking of the Roman fiction into one only tenuously

grounded in fact. Arguably this tendency towards ‘faction19’, or a retelling of fact ‘that

would…read as a novel20’ is a distinctively journalistic trait— as much a vestige of Mussolini’s

previous occupation as a propagandistic move.

The speech is one of several text inclusions in Invisible Cities, which also displayed clippings

of Mussolini’s interviews in the Monthly Tourist Magazine (1935) and National Geographic (1937),

14 Borges, Jorge Luis. “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote.” In Ficciones. Buenos Aires: Emece� Editores, 1956.

15 ibid. at page 91

16 ibid.

17 Mussolini, Benito. ‘Past and Future’ speech at 1922 Birthday of Rome celebration, as cited in by Tio�, Nil in

“Spatial Myths.” In Topographies of Fascism: Habitus, Space, and Writing in Twentieth-century Spain. Toronto: University of

Toronto Press, 2013. 146. emphasis author’s own

18 ibid.

19 defined by Tom Wolfe as combining ‘the skills and stamina of an ace reporter with the techniques of fiction’,

cited by Caudill, David Stanley. in “’Faction’: Truman Capote, Legal Ethics, and In Cold Blood.” In Stories About Sience in

Law: Literary and Historical Images of Acquired Expertise. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate Pub., 2011. 102.

20 ibid.

1

0. Preface

In his 1981 post-modern epic Lanark, Alasdair Gray writes that ‘by Arts is manufactured that

great mechanical Man called a state1’. These words have perhaps never been truer than Rome,

whose character within the public consciousness was shaped by some of history’s finest

artists: prodigies in architecture, literature, politics, and rhetoric. With skill and careful

consideration these elite excavated, excised, and deconstructed Rome in a stereotomic process

of construction of the ‘ideal city2’. Yet while the propensity for alternately exhuming and

concealing the urban remains of one’s predecessors is not by any means uniquely Roman3, one may

argue that nowhere has the resulting image of such a process been so widely enduring as that of

Rome. Initially a conduit for ancient posturing at equivalency with sophisticated contemporaries

and major ancient world power players, the narrative of Rome began as a mere embellishment of

truth. It was in later Fascist Italy that this story was bridled as a tool of the state, to

cataclysmic effect. While nationalistic ideology ignited the flame powering Fascist purifications

of the city, it was the thrill of creation that fanned the blaze that disfigured— and later

eclipsed— the factual basis upon which such fantasy was founded. By invoking a narrative that

was in itself part falsification, 20th century Romans divorced themselves almost entirely from

the historical reality; the deracination of monuments and ideologies diminishing their prior

existences. Invisible Cities4: The Disappearance of Rome charted this episodic mutation of

the Roman narrative, combining both ancient and mid-20th century retellings of this story to

examine not only their substance but also the manner of their retelling. Though the scarcity of

documentation (particularly of a photographic nature) is anomalous for the exhibition’s 2014

context, no doubt this has only added to its intrigue and richness of meaning. From the limited

surviving resources I have attempted to reconstruct the exhibition as faithfully as possible;

though—as with all stories—take all that follows with a grain of salt, if not an ocean, if you

live by the sea.

1 Gray, Alasdair. Lanark: A Life in Four Books. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2001.

2 Dey, Hendrik W. “The Motives for Aurelian’s Wall.” In The Aurelian wall and the refashioning of Imperial Rome,

A.D. 271-855. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 146.

3 Robin Boyd writes of 1960s Australian architecture’s ‘[scraping] of decoration from the sides of architecture…a

simple act of housekeeping after the Victorians’ squalid behaviour’. “The Pursuit of Pleasingness.” In The Australian Ugli-

ness. Melbourne: Cheshire, 1960.

4 Named, it appears, for the 1972 novel by Italo Calvino of the same name. For more on this connection, see after-

word.

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I. (Six) Memos for the Next Millennium

The popular identity of Rome is ensconced in the iconography of its ancient incarnation: an eternal city5 whose name connotes monumental masonry and colonnaded structures. One must question the origin of these characteristics that we now recognise as definitively Roman, and in doing it is impossible to ignore the distinctly non-Roman birthplaces of these. Much has been made of Invisible Cities’ inclusion of a quote from Livy, who of the Macedonian elite wrote:

‘(T)hey poked fun at the appearance of the city itself, which had not yet been beautified in either its public or its private spaces6’

The quote itself was printed on cardstock in Roman font7 and mounted as one would an artwork, with this self-conscious isolation and framing of content pervading the exhibition as a whole. In contextualising the exhibition the quote is invaluable, foregrounding the construction of Rome’s image against self-assertion via an illusory representation that far outstripped reality. To project this narrative of sophistication and significance, ancient Romans turned to their contemporaries, appropriating the imagery of Greece and the Hellenistic East (amongst others) to falsify power and wealth using a pre-existing visual vocabulary.

To do this, the Romans ‘[rooted] around [Greek and Hellenistic] prefab…semiology8’ to concisely establish parallels between themselves and these ancient world powers. One such example of this emulation is the similarity of the Roman Basilica form and the Egyptian ‘oecus Aegyptius9’, with floor plans of the former included in Invisible Cities. While records only indicate the broad groups into which the objects were sorted and not their exact placement, one may infer that representations of the two typologies were displayed alongside— and in juxtaposition to— one another. The formal similarities are striking, particularly in conjunction with ancient accounts of the functional similarities between the typologies. The purposive basis of such structures as reception spaces for visiting foreign dignitaries is illustrative of the tendency in ancient Rome to augment reality, adumbrating the repeated manifestation of this very proclivity in years to come. Invisible Cities also included plans of Roman temples—frequently and erroneously thought to be categorically Roman constructions— in the vicinity of those of the podium temples of Ancient Greece (see fig 1.). The indisputable parallels again underscore the meticulousness with which the Roman image was even at this early stage being crafted from fragments collected from far afield.

5 Atkinson, David, and Denis Cosgrove. “Urban Rhetoric And Embodied Identities: City, Nation, And Empire At The Vittorio Emanuele II Monument In Rome, 1870–1945.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88, no. 1 (1998): 33.6 Livy, 40.5.7 (182 BC)7 For more discussion pertaining to Invisible Cities’ use of font refer to afterword8 Deleuze, Gilles, and Fé lix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.9 Vitruvius, De Architectura 6.3.9

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Fig. 1 Comparison of plans of Temple of Aphaia (L), Aegina10, Greece with Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus11 (R), Rome.

With the passage of time this appropriation grew more brazen, evolving from the adaptation of foreign elements and stylistics to the unabashed excision and transplantation of materials and artefacts. Invisible Cities highlighted this physical and ideological looting by way of a Corinthian capital surviving from Sula’s 69 BC Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. Part of a column removed from the Athenian Temple of Olympian Zeus, and reinstalled in Sula’s Temple, the capital is a clear example of Roman employment of pre-existing signifiers of power and wealth to perpetuate a narrative and image. Beyond this, it highlights the impunity of such extractions and subsequent utilisation, suggesting that the political influence (and corollary ability to perform blatant thievery) of Rome eventually aligned with the image it had projected. What are the implications of this convergence of the foregoing Roman ‘fiction’ and the reality? As Baudrillard writes, to simulate is to ‘[produce] ‘true’ symptoms12’, and thereby ‘[threaten] the difference between the ‘true’ and the ‘false’13’. Such a theory would posit causality between the two; in presenting a fiction of their city as on par with their contemporaries, Romans were in fact pre-empting the reality

The implications of such a statement are profound; primary amongst them being the insinuation that any fiction intricately furnished and repeatedly affirmed transforms into fact. Hence, while the actuality of ancient Rome was not always congruous with retrospective visualisation of a sophisticated and organised whole, subsequent repetition of this narrative has accorded incontrovertible acceptance of this as fact. This logic also confers on audiences the ability to view objects decontextualised within an exhibition context and recognise them as inherently representative of Rome.

10 image via “The Temple of Aphæa - Ægina.” The Temple of Aphæa, Ægina. http://lhodges.users37.interdns.co.uk/me/aphaia/aphaia.htm 11 image via “On the Kinds of Temples.” Vitruvius Book 3, Chapter 3: Translation. http://www.vitruvius.be/boek3h3.htm12 Baudrillard, Jean. “The Precession of Simulacra.” In Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994. 3.13 ibid.

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Fig. 3 The paradox of modern tourism28: the reduction of an entire city (or here, country) to its monuments, and equation of this distillation to the city’s ‘real’ identity

One of Invisible Cities’ more eclectic inclusions was a series of satellite images of Rome from Google Maps. Curious about these maps is not their capturing of the image of early 2000s Rome, but rather the manner in which seminal Roman monuments are summarised. The Marcello theatre is described as a ‘home to summer concerts’ while the Altar of the Fatherland is reduced to a ‘white marble memorial monument’ (see fig 5.). The conciseness of these descriptions highlight the relegation of significant architectures and moments to ornamental artefacts upon which is projected the spectacle (such as the ‘summer concerts’), thereby transforming them into props for retelling yet another adaptation of Roman fiction.

28 Advertising copy sourced from ‘Autumn, Winter, & Spring: Guided Holidays in Europe and Britain 2014/15’, Trafal-gar Tours. 2014.

5

all of which suggest a leader seeking realisation of fantasy in place of historical veracity. Examining urban renovations of 1920s and 30s Rome, one cannot help alarm at the parasitic manner in which Mussolini’s Rome consumed the reality upon which it was conceived. Reconstruction of Rome as the ‘ideal city21’ necessitated the destruction of ‘years of decadence22’, a dismantling captured by the process images of urban development projects displayed in the exhibition. Again, records of the exact images are incomplete, but it is known that photographs of the Via dell’Impero (see fig. 2) and Largo di Torre Argentina were included. Given what exists of the exhibition cover page (see fig. 3) it would not be unreasonable to suggest that the Capitoline Hill and excavation work thereupon were also included: all three projects in keeping with Fascist equation of physical isolation to a preservation of both form and ideology. As with the foregoing excisions of the ancient Romans, however, the identity of the monuments as more than mere physical entities cannot be said to have endured their deracination. Rather, like the severed limb or fruit fallen from the tree, the monuments have putrefied upon separation from the body of which they were constituents, so that Largo di Torre Argentina no longer exists as Largo di Torre Argentina, but a facsimile thereof. Indeed, the only objects capable of retaining consistent denotations and meaning regardless of their location are theatre props: stage sets, backdrops, and other implements by which a fantasy may be furnished. This reduction of Rome to a dramatic tableau calcifies the Fascist instalment of the Roman story as a conscious and complete severance from reality: a work of pure fiction.

Fig. 2 1932 view of construction work on the Via dell’Impero from the Colosseum23

21 see n2. above22 Benito Mussolini, ‘La nuova Roma’ (25 December 195), in Opera Omnia di Benito Mussolini, eds. E. and D. Susmel, vol. 20 (Florence, 1951-1963); quote in Etlin, Modernism in Italian Architecture, 1890-1940, 392.23 Image via the Museum of Rome, Municipal Photographic Archives, AF 24428. , (September 1932) Photographer un-known.

6

It is no surprise, then, that Invisible Cities included a selection of Piranesi’s fantastical imaginings of Rome, this unapologetically and entirely fabricated version of the city aligning with the flagrancy with which Mussolini’s Rome departed from the history preceding it. As with the ‘Past and Future’ speech presented in two media, the exhibition reiterates one idea in two modes and registers: Piranesi erring towards the patently mythological while Mussolini adopted a subtler, insidious approach. Diametric as these representational methods may be, their message is identical: our understanding of Rome is ensconced in the representations of our predecessors, whose selectivity disfigured the source material almost beyond recognition.

Fig. 3. Only known surviving exhibition guide cover page24. The location of the exhibition remains unknown

24 It is believed that the image was taken from Ramieri, Anna Maria . “2.1 A general survey.” Internet Archaeol. 31. Terrenato et al. A General Survey. http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue31/1/21survey.htm (accessed May 19, 2014).

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III. If (On a Winter’s Night) A Traveller

While the Roman narrative is best known in its ancient and Fascist incarnations, these remain but two of the most prevalent versions of the story amidst a cacophony of conflicting retellings. Ton Otto and Rachel Charlotte Smith write of the ‘contraction of the time horizon to the immediate future and a shallow past25’, and it is this same condensation and conflation of multiple editions of the Roman fiction that ensued in the years subsequent to Mussolini. By the time of Invisible Cities’ opening in 2014, there were enough fictions of the history of Rome to fill the Library of Babel26 ten times over: told in whispers or entombed between pages, if not played out on widescreens or captured with the lens of a camera. The friction between these representations did not go unremarked upon by the exhibition, part of which was dedicated to exploring late 20th century and early 2000s annotations upon the Roman manuscript.

What remains of the exhibition catalogue and promotional copy suggest elucidation of the manner in which Rome was reimagined in the early 21st century, this time as a touristic commodity distinct from prior identities as a bastion of power or playground for dictatorial fantasies. Such an interpretation is gleaned from the exhibition’s display of assorted pamphlets and promotional material for guided tours and Roman holidays (see fig. 4). On first examination these are almost laughable for their puerile distillation of Rome as bipartitely constituted of Ancient ruins alongside contemporary retail and leisure promenades. However, it is arguable that this simplification in post modernity was the only possible progression for a fiction painstakingly outlined by the hand of prior authors both ancient and modern. Pursuant to Mussolini’s surgical treatment of the Roman urban fabric and demarcation of the street and monument, into what else could the Roman story evolve? By framing the city’s architectural icons within the void space and rendering streets the arterial pathways by which these could be accessed, Mussolini ensured that the story of future Romes could take one of only two paths: the podium for glorified antiquity, or the embodiment of the ‘modern city27’. The incoherence of the 21st century iteration of the Roman narrative extends this paradox, with the included travel brochures foregrounding the disjuncture between simultaneous portrayals as a repository of ancient history and facilitator of modern tourist consumption.

25 Otto, Ton, and Rachel Charlotte Smith. “Design Anthropology: A Distinct Style of Knowing.” In Design Anthropolo-gy: Theory and Practice. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. 17.26 As described by Borges, Jorge Luis. “The Library of Babel.” In Ficciones. Buenos Aires: Emece� Editores, 1956. 27 Benito Mussolini, speech in Campidoglio (21 April, 1924) ; quote in Baravelli, G. C.. “The Rome of Mussolini.” In Policy of Public Works Under the Fascist Regime. Roma: Societa� editrice di “Novissima”, 1935. 67.

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Sources

Books

Baravelli, G. C.. “The Rome of Mussolini.” In Policy of public works under the fascist regime. Roma: Società editrice di “Novissima”, 1935. 67.

Baudrillard, Jean. “The Precession of Simulacra.” In Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994. 3.

Borges, Jorge Luis. “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote.” In Ficciones. Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 1956.

Boyd, Robin. “The Pursuit of Pleasingness.” In The Australian ugliness. Melbourne: Cheshire, 1960.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

Dey, Hendrik W.. “The Motives for Aurelian’s Wall.” In The Aurelian wall and the refashioning of Imperial Rome, A.D. 271-855. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 146.

Gray, Alasdair. Lanark: A Life in Four Books. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2001.

Otto, Ton, and Rachel Charlotte Smith. “Design Anthropology: A Distinct Style of Knowing.” In Design Anthropology: Theory and Practice. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. 17.

Tió, Nil. “Spatial Myths.” In Topographies of Fascism: Habitus, Space, and Writing in Twentieth-century Spain. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. 146.

Journals

Atkinson, David, and Denis Cosgrove. “Urban Rhetoric And Embodied Identities: City, Nation, And Empire At The Vittorio Emanuele II Monument In Rome, 1870–1945.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88, no. 1 (1998): 33.

Caudill, David Stanley. “’Faction’: Truman Capote, Legal Ethics, and In Cold Blood.” In Stories About Sience in Law: Literary and Historical Images of Acquired Expertise. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate Pub., 2011. 102.

Websites

“On the Kinds of Temples.” Vitruvius Book 3, Chapter 3: Translation. http://www.vitruvius.be/boek3h3.htm.

Ramieri, Anna Maria . “2.1 A general survey.” Internet Archaeol. 31. Terrenato et al. A general survey. http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue31/1/21survey.htm.

“The Temple of Aphæa - Ægina.” The Temple of Aphæa, Ægina. http://lhodges.users37.interdns.co.uk/me/aphaia/aphaia.htm.

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Fig. 5 Google Maps’ prosaic summaries of historic sites in Rome simultaneously summarise their literal meaning and fail to capture their nuanced significance. Arguably the latter is impossible in such few words,

though the elements of these sites that the map has identified as integral are nonetheless bemusing29.

The constant flux of the image and story of Rome, and ensuing futility in attempting to secure an eternally consistent denotation of meaning by this very moniker, resurfaces in the last of the objects30 on display. In the months preceding the exhibition, the public was invited to submit their own photographs and other mementos of Rome. Though there is no way of reassembling this collection, one can only imagine the breadth of such gathered material, and the different facets of the city they would have alternately accentuated or suppressed. Regardless, the collection and presentation of such myriad captures and perspectives would foreground the impossibility of creating one cohesive or consistent narrative of Rome, in spite of the best efforts of many throughout history.

Loathe though we may be to admit it, all we identify and exalt as ‘Roman’—and indeed ‘Rome’— is predicated upon the esteem with which we regard the narrative retellings of our forebears. It is ironic that it is only when confronted by something as meticulously curated and presented as Invisible Cities that we question the source and veracity of the stories we accept as history, or the facts we accept as truth. All retellings of the past are products of unceasing redaction—

29 Map data © 2014 Google30 In the sense of having been verified by sources other than word of mouth

10

the manifestation of the ‘decisions and revisions31’ of their respective authors. Yet we must be wary of this inevitable process of deconstruction and reassembly, for it serves only to draw us away from the reality of the point of our departure.

The fiction of Rome has endured in many forms since antiquity, surviving heavy amendment under Fascism and the intermediary period preceding it, only to mutate once more within the post-modern framework of the 21st century. Architectural and historic landmarks have remained in a corporeal sense, but of the discarnate Rome of a bygone era that these objects purport to represent, the same may not be said. With fragments and educated guesswork we may attempt to recapture this, though as with all fallen empires and regimes, tourist luggage, and gallery exhibitions, this Rome has disappeared, never again to be seen.

31 Aptly, this quote from TS Eliot’s The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock (1915) concludes with ‘…which a minute will reverse’

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-I. Briefly, on Typography and Calvino

Given the scrupulousness with which the Invisible Cities exhibition was assembled, it is impossible to overlook the typography of the remaining printed material as having been set in the Roman typeface Bodoni. ‘Roman’ in this case denotes the adaptation of Roman square capital letters— those found in inscriptions such as that beneath the pediment of the Pantheon— alongside Caroline miniscules, with the appellation ‘Roman’ again ascribed to boldness and antiquity in perpetuation of an image that is both idealised and reductive. This focus on minutiae is echoed in the exhibition’s entitlement after Calvino’s 1972 text of the same name: the plot of which is centred upon one explorer’s imaginative retellings of cities he has visited. Naturally the parallels between this thematic concern and the 2014 exhibition are numerous, and it is in homage to this connection that parts I and III of this text were named for other Calvino works.

Finally, as we part, a caveat: don’t believe everything that you read. It is unavoidable that the story is shaped by the hand of whoever grasps the pen, and one never can be too certain when deciphering the handwriting of another.

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